Content recommendation using third party profiles

ABSTRACT

A method for personalizing content for a particular user in a computing system comprising a user interface configured to display content. The method comprises identifying one or more features of a short term profile of a user that are not included in a long term profile of the user, using the one or more features to identify one or more third party profiles having features that substantially match the one or more features of the user&#39;s short term profile, accessing the identified one or more third party profiles, and providing one or more content items included in the third party profile to the user, the one or more content items having associated features that match the one or more features of the short term profile. An alternative method comprises accessing one or more third party profiles that are not a profile of the user, and using the accessed third party profile to identify a plurality of content items for recommendation to the user based on a feature set of the third party profile.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No.14/264,546, filed Apr. 29, 2014 (now allowed), which is a continuationof U.S. application Ser. No. 13/614,816, filed Sep. 13, 2012 (now U.S.Pat. No. 8,762,859), which is a continuation of U.S. application Ser.No. 12/037,700, filed Feb. 26, 2008 (now U.S. Pat. No. 8,296,660), whichclaims priority to and benefit from U.S. Provisional Application No.60/892,201, filed Feb. 28, 2007. The above-referenced applications areexpressly incorporated herein by reference in their entireties.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to personalization of content. Moreparticularly, the present invention relates to user interface techniquesand active and passive personalization techniques to enhance a user'spersonalization experience.

Background

With more and more content being continually added to the world wideinformation infrastructure, the volume of information accessible via theInternet, can easily overwhelm someone wishing to locate items ofinterest. Although such a large source pool of information is desirable,only a small amount is usually relevant to a given person.Personalization techniques are developing to provide intelligentfiltering systems to ‘understand’ a user's need for specific types ofinformation.

Personalization typically requires some aspect of user modeling.Ideally, a perfect computer model of a user's brain would determine theuser's preferences exactly and track them as the user's tastes, context,or location change. Such a model would allow a personal newspaper, forexample, to contain only articles in which the user has interest, and noarticle in which the user is not interested. The perfect model wouldalso display advertisements with 100% user activity rates (i.e., aviewer would peruse and/or click-through every ad displayed) and woulddisplay only products that a user would buy. Therefore, personalizationrequires modeling the user's mind with as many of the attendantsubtleties as possible. Unfortunately, user modeling to date (such asinformation filtering agents) has been relatively unsophisticated.

However, personalization content as well as profiles can be difficultfor users to digest, especially where such content is dispersed througha web page that often requires a large amount of scrolling. Furthermore,developing a personalization profile can be cumbersome and timeconsuming. Fill-in profiles represent the simplest form of user modelingfor personalization technology. A fill-in profile may ask for userdemographic information such as income, education, children, zip code,sex and age. The form may further ask for interest information such assports, hobbies, entertainment, fashion, technology or news about aparticular region, personality, or institution. The fill-in profile typeof user model misses much of the richness desired in user modelingbecause user interests typically do not fall into neat categories.

Feature-based recommendation is a form of user modeling that considersmultiple aspects of a product. For example, a person may like moviesthat have the features of action-adventure, rated R (but not G), andhave a good critic review of B+ or higher (or 3 stars or higher). Such amultiple-feature classifier such as a neural network can capture thecomplexity of user preferences if the interest is rich enough.Text-based recommendation is a rich form of feature-basedrecommendation. Text-based documents can be characterized using, forexample, vector-space methods. Thus, documents containing the samefrequencies of words can be grouped together or clustered. Presumably,if a user selects one document in a particular cluster, the user islikely to want to read other documents in that same cluster.

However, it would be advantageous to provide a user with apersonalization experience that generates positive perceptions andresponses that encourage users to want to use the personalizationservice, while avoiding those negative perceptions that would discourageusers from using the system, in an unintrusive manner so that the usercan view content in a manner with which they are already familiar.Positive perceptions from the point of view of a user include, easilydeveloping a profile, easily viewing third party profiles, and easilyviewing potentially interesting content.

BRIEF SUMMARY

The principles of the present invention relate to a method forpersonalizing content for a particular user in a computing systemcomprising a user interface configured to display content. The methodcomprises identifying one or more features of a short term profile of auser that are not included in a long term profile of the user, using theone or more features to identify one or more third party profiles havingfeatures that substantially match the one or more features of the user'sshort term profile, accessing the identified one or more third partyprofiles, and providing one or more content items included in the thirdparty profile to the user, the one or more content items havingassociated features that match the one or more features of the shortterm profile.

The principles of the present invention also relate to a method topersonalize content using a computer system including a user interfaceconfigured to display content for a particular user that does not have aprofile. The method comprises accessing one or more third party profilesthat are not a profile of the user, and using the accessed third partyprofile to identify a plurality of content items for recommendation tothe user based on a feature set of the third party profile.

This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in asimplified form that are further described below in the DetailedDescription. This Summary is not intended to identify key features oressential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended tobe used as an aid in determining the scope of the claimed subjectmatter.

Additional features and advantages will be set forth in the descriptionwhich follows, and in part will be obvious from the description, or maybe learned by the practice of the teaching herein. The features andadvantages of the teaching herein may be realized and obtained by meansof the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out in theappended claims. These and other features will become more fullyapparent from the following description and appended claims, or may belearned by the practice of the invention as set forth hereinafter.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

To further clarify the present invention, a more particular descriptionof the invention will be rendered by reference to specific embodimentsthereof which are illustrated in the appended drawings. It isappreciated that these drawings depict only typical embodiments of theinvention and are therefore not to be considered limiting of its scope.The invention will be described and explained with additionalspecificity and detail through the use of the accompanying drawings inwhich:

FIG. 1 illustrates an exemplary user interface displaying an image cloudused to obtain initial interests of a user for an exemplarypersonalization service.

FIGS. 2A and 2B illustrate an exemplary user interface displaying animage cloud used to display recommended content to a user for anexemplary personalization service.

FIG. 3A illustrates an exemplary method for using an Image cloud toobtain initial interests of a user.

FIG. 3B illustrates an exemplary method for using an Image cloud todisplay recommended content to a user.

FIG. 4A illustrates an exemplary user interface displaying an imagecloud used to display popular recommended content to a user for anexemplary personalization service.

FIG. 4B illustrates an exemplary method for using an image cloud todisplay popular content to a user.

FIG. 5A illustrates an exemplary user interface displaying an imagecloud used to display search content to a user for an exemplarypersonalization service.

FIG. 5B illustrates an exemplary method for using an image cloud todisplay search content to a user.

FIG. 6A illustrates an exemplary user interface displaying a profileimage cloud.

FIG. 6B illustrates an exemplary method for displaying a profile imagecloud.

FIGS. 7A through 7D illustrate an exemplary user interface displaying aprofile image cloud for three contacts of the user.

FIG. 8 illustrates an exemplary user interface displaying an updatedprofile image cloud.

FIG. 9 illustrates an exemplary user interface displaying updatedrecommended content based from the updated profile image cloud.

FIG. 10 illustrates an exemplary network environment for performingaspects of the present invention.

FIG. 11 illustrates a process for generating a profile for a contentitem.

FIG. 12 illustrates an exemplary profile.

FIGS. 13A through 13C illustrate an embodiment of a short term and longterm profile that change over time.

FIG. 14 illustrates an exemplary method for using short and long termprofiles.

FIG. 15 illustrates a process for a dynamic entity to process input.

FIG. 16 illustrates an exemplary method for using third party profiles.

FIG. 17 illustrates an exemplary method for allowing an opt-out user touse a third party profile.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The present invention relates to using the concept of “personalization”in a computer network environment to deliver the most relevant possibleexperiences to customers, driving significant factors such as customersatisfaction and customer loyalty. Embodiments of the present inventioncontemplate a layered, portable, personalization platform that canpresent various personalized content sources including, but not limitedto: (1) portal to access web services; (2) feeds and favorites; (3)recommended content; (4) network and channel content promotions; (5)search results; (6) advertisements; and (7) social networks. One benefitof the present invention is that it eliminates the requirement for auser to actively seek feed sources or to mark favorites in order toprovide the user with personalized content. The present inventionautomatically identifies relevant content based on the personalizationtechniques presented herein. While the focus of the present invention isto provide personalized content to a user, embodiments may also becoupled with customizable features to provide even more customersatisfaction and customer loyalty. Aspects of the user interface for thepersonalized platform will first be described, following which will bedetails relating to the implementation of personalization techniques,including the underlying system of the platform.

Definitions

The following provides various definitions that will assist one of skillin the art to understand the teachings of the present invention. Itshould be understood that the terms are intended to be broadly construedrather than narrowly construed.

Entity: any user or content item that can be characterized as having an“interest.” Examples of an entity include a person, article, image, webpage, movie clip, audio clip, feed, promotion, and the like.

User: any person or entity. In some cases, the “user” can be representedby a screenname or other anonymous identifier. A known user (whoseidentity is known) and an anonymous user (who can be identified throughtracking technology) can have Profiles. An opt-out user is one who hasaffirmatively elected to opt-out of having an Profile identified forthat user. However, an opt-out user can still have access to certainpersonalization features of the present invention.

Content item: any information that can be displayed or played (e.g.,audio file or multimedia file) on a communication device operated by auser.

Feature: generally, a word or textual phrase used to describe an entity.E.g. “football”, “baseball”, “San Francisco”, “bring”, etc. The conceptof a feature is not limited to such phrases and can be extended torepresent such things as a category, the source of a feed, the colors oficons, the existence of images in a story, etc.

Feature set or Feature vector: a set of features associated with anentity.

Interest: the weighted importance of a feature. E.g., baseball can havetwice the weighted value as football. There are both positive andnegative interests weightings. They can represent like/dislike (a personlikes football and dislikes baseball). An interest can be based on anumber of factors such as the number of times a feature appears in anarticle, the user's exhibited interest or lack of interest in a feature,etc.

Interest set or Interest vector: a set of interests associated with anentity.

Profile: a set of feature vector(s) and/or interest vector(s) associatedwith an entity.

Composite Profile: two or more Profiles combined to generate contentbased on the combination of the two or more Profiles

Passive: gathering information about an entity by transparentlymonitoring its activities.

Active: gathering information about an entity by having the entityknowingly express likes and dislikes.

Positive: gathering information about an entity in response to positiveuser interest.

Negative: gathering information about an entity in response to negativeuser interest.

Static Entity: An entity whose Interest Vector does not change over time

Dynamic Entity: An entity whose Interest Vector change over time andcould have multiple “snapshots” of Interest Vectors based oncontext/time.

Image Clouds for Presenting Personalized Content

FIGS. 1 through 5 illustrate various aspects of a content recommendationservice 100 that includes various interfaces that present content to auser and through which a user is able to interact, and that uses passiveand active personalization to provide a user with personalized content.Optionally, although not shown, the content recommendation service mayinitially display an entrance page briefly describing the recommendationservice and providing an entrance link.

Upon entering the recommendation service 100, as shown in FIG. 1, theuser is presented with a bootstrap image cloud 105 having a plurality ofinitial images 104. In one embodiment, the images 104 may be determinedand presented based on known user demographics and/or user interests,such as from a fill-in type survey. The images 104 may al so be selectedbased on past searches, past browsing hi story, past purchases, and thelike, previously performed by the user. If user demographics, userinterests, or other user activity is not known, the images 104 may beselected from a pool of ‘popular’ images or a set of images thatrepresent various broad categories to try to identify user interests.

A user is able to select one or more of the images 104 in the bootstrapimage cloud 105 to indicate his interest in receiving more contentrelated to the category or subject matter of the image. Advantageously,the bootstrap image cloud 105 with initial images 104 provides a way toseed the recommendation system with initial user interests. The initialimage cloud 105 essentially acts as a conversation starter between theuser and the recommendation system that is much easier, more appealingand enjoyable to use than traditional lengthy fill-in type survey forms.As shown in FIG. 1, the user selects one or more images 104A, 104B, asindicated by the “thumbs up” icon on these images and any others theuser feels compelled to select, which the recommendation service(described below) will use to automatically find content personalized tothat user.

FIG. 1 introduces the concept of an “image cloud” that will be referredto at various times throughout this disclosure. An image cloud enablesthe user or a third party to easily capture content of interest to theuser or third party in a visually appealing manner as well as conveyinga large amount of information than could be conveyed using simple text.As shown in FIG. 1, the images in the image cloud are grouped anddisplayed adjacent or in close proximity with each other in onepredefined area. The placement of the images minimizes content such astext, spacing or other content, between the images. Thus, an image cloudvisually represents information in the form of images in a manner that auser or other third party can easily comprehend the images. Suchinformation that can be visually represented by an image cloud may be abootstrap method, user profile, recommendations, popularity (what's hot)content, search results, and the like. This enables a user or thirdparty to view and/or select images in the image cloud without requiringa user or other third party to use extensive navigation methods to findimages, such as scroll bars, excessive mousing movements, extensivewindow resizing, or the like. Thus, the image cloud also minimizes thenavigation methods required to locate the plurality of imagesrepresenting visually representing information of interest.

The term “bootstrap” is appended before the term “image cloud” simply todescribe one embodiment of using image clouds to assess initial userinterests. However, the term bootstrap should not be construed aslimiting in any way to the scope of the present invention. Furthermore,while the drawings show the bootstrap image cloud as having images ofthe same size located in an array, the size, shape, and/or placement ofthe images can vary based on design considerations. While one advantageof the present invention is to attempt to minimize the amount of contentlocated between the image clouds, it will be appreciated that thepresent invention also encompasses variations of image clouds thatinclude a minimal amount of text between and/or overlapping the imagesof the image clouds.

In one embodiment, each image in the bootstrap image cloud 105 relatesto a particular category or channel, such as, but not limited to,politics, elections, world, business/finance, sports, celebrities,movies, food, home, fashion, health, real estate, gaming, science,automobiles, architecture, photography, travel, pets, and parenting. Anexample of this embodiment is where an image represents “politics,” anddisplays the President of the United States to visually representpolitically-related content. In one embodiment, hovering over an imagecauses a descriptor to appear specifying the particular category. Thecategories can be broad or narrow. Content displayed in response toselection of a category image may produce content based on popularityand may not necessarily correspond with the image itself. In otherwords, selecting an image of the President of the United States mayproduce feeds related to the most popular current political issues andon a particular day may not necessarily be related to the President ofthe United States. In this situation, the image of the President of theUnited States is used symbolically to represent a category since thePresident is a well-known political figure.

In another embodiment, the initial images can relate to a particularinterest (described below) describing the subject matter specific to theimage. In this example, the image of the President of the United Statesmay actually visually represent actual content related specific to thePresident of the United States rather than to the category of politics.As discussed below, where features are assigned to a particular image,interests can also be assigned. Selection on this type of image producesfeeds related specifically to the image itself because the featurevector(s) and/or interest vector(s) (i.e., Profile described below) isused to identify content specifically related to the Profile of theimage is produced. In addition, the Profile can be used to furthertailor presentation of content based on concepts of sameness andimportance, described below. Thus, selection of the image displaying thePresident of the United States would produce feeds related specificallyto the President of the United States.

As will be discussed below, when a request is received to generate animage cloud, the personalization system accesses an image bank to matchimages based on category or features/interests. The personalizationsystem also accesses a content bank to access other content, such asfeeds, articles, etc., that relate to the category or features/interestsidentified by the user. The images can further be associated withfeatures/interests so that when a user selects a particular image, thepersonalization system generates content related to the image. Imagescan also contain a link that redirects users to a content providerwebsite.

FIG. 2A illustrates another aspect of the recommendation service afterthe user has initially seeded her interests, for example, usingbootstrap image cloud 105. In one embodiment, FIG. 2A illustrates arecommendations page 106 that is accessible via a tabulation 108. Inaddition, tabulation 110 can be used to select a popularity page andfield 112 can be used to perform a search.

Recommendations page 106 includes image recommendations 114 thatpictorially depicts a user's interests via images such as images 115,116. For example, images 115 and 116 visually depict topics or personsthat the user has expressed interested in. The collection of imagerecommendations 114 will also be referred to herein as a “recommendationimage cloud.” Advantageously, a recommendation image cloud provides asnapshot view of the content that is currently available based on thecurrent interests of a user. Preferably, these images also relate tocontent that the user will most likely be interested in. Recommendationspage 106 may also include recommendations in the form of textrecommendations 118. This can also be referred to as an “inbox” ofrecommended current content that the user is most likely interest in.Text recommendations 118 include feed content related to the topics orpersonalities that may or may not be linked to images displayed in therecommendation image cloud 114. Selecting a text recommendation mayprovide various types of feed content, such as, but not limited to,articles, web pages, video clips, audio clips, images, and the like.

FIG. 2A illustrates that images in image recommendations 114 and feedcontent in text recommendations 118 relate to the original selections ofthe user from the bootstrap image cloud 105. In one embodiment, a usercan review the image recommendations 114 and affirm or change what ispresented to the user. User input can also affect what appears in textrecommendations 118. For example, as shown in FIG. 2A, when a userhovers over an image 115, a user interest icon 117 is displayed. Userinterest icon 117 can display a brief abstract of the content associatedwith the image 115. User interest icon 117 displays a “thumbs up”approval 117 a, “thumbs down” disapproval 117 b, and a noncommittal“save” selection 117 c. A user can select one of these options toexpress approval, disapproval, or not commit to a certain image. Thesetypes of input from a user are referred to as “active” input. As will bediscussed in further detail below, a user's interests can be weightedbased on this active input as well as other types of user-expressedinterest. A selection of “save” 117 c may be considered as a “softlike”. In other words, a “save” may not be given the same weight as a“thumbs up” but still may be given some small weighting since the userhas expressed enough interest to save the image for later consideration.

FIG. 2B illustrates a page that is presented to the user after the userhas selected a “thumbs up” 117 a on the user interest icon 117. FIG. 2Balso illustrates an embodiment where the images 115 in imagerecommendations 114 are not linked to the feeds displayed in textrecommendations 118. In the text recommendations 118, the abstracts havechanged to reflect feed content related to the specific image 115 thatthe user has selected. FIG. 2B also illustrates that the user can returnto content related to the other images 114 by selecting a refresh icon120. Anytime refresh icon 120 is selected, the system understands thisto be a general request for different content from the recommendationengine. When this icon 120 is selected, the recommendation system isrefreshed to provide the most current information that relates to theuser's interests. A “saved” icon 122 can also be used to restore imagesthat had previously been saved by the user for consideration fromselection such as “saved” 117 c selection depicted in FIG. 2A.

As mentioned above, in one embodiment, the text recommendations 118 andimage recommendations 114 may also be interlinked. For example, a usercan hover over an Image 115 and a popup abstract 117 containing asummary of the feed content related to that image. Selecting the image115 causes one or more feed content in text recommendations 118 relatingto that image to be highlighted (such that a user can easily findspecific feed content related to that image). As described below infurther detail, the present invention includes methodologies forpersonalizing the image recommendations 114 and/or text recommendations118 using active and passive personalization techniques.

Thus, FIGS. 1, 2A and 2B illustrate exemplary screen shots that can beinitiated using a bootstrap image cloud. FIG. 3A illustrates anexemplary method for personalizing content for a particular user usingan image cloud, the method including, at 302, displaying a image cloudhaving a plurality of images being grouped and displayed adjacent or inclose proximity with each other in one predefined area to minimizecontent between the plurality of content images so as to minimizenavigation methods required to locate the plurality of images. Anexample of the bootstrap image cloud is depicted in FIG. 1, althoughvarious ways of arranging the images in the bootstrap image cloud arepossible within the broad scope of the definition of a bootstrap imagecloud and consistent with the teachings herein.

Further, the images in the bootstrap can represent different ideas. Forexample, as discussed above, each of the images in the bootstrap imagecloud can be associated with a category, with each of the imagesrepresenting a different category. Alternatively, each of the images inthe bootstrap image cloud can be associated with an interest andinterest set based on actual content of the image.

The method includes, at 304, receiving input from a user selecting atleast one image on the image cloud, at 306, accessing a plurality ofcontent feeds related to the at least one image selected by the user(e.g., based on the category or feature/interests associated with theimage), at 308, accessing a plurality of content images related to theat least one image selected by the user, at 310, displaying theplurality of content feeds along with the plurality of images. Themethod can further include, at 312, receiving input from a userselecting at least one content feed or at least one content image, andat 314, rendering content related to the selected content feed orcontent image. The bootstrap image cloud thus serves as a means forobtaining an initial understanding of user interests to be able topresent content that is more likely to be of interest to the user.

Of course it will be appreciated that once a user seeds her interestsusing, for example, bootstrap image cloud (FIG. 1) or subsequent use ofthe recommendations page (FIG. 2A), that a user can access therecommendation service 100 directly through the recommendations page 106without having to go to the bootstrap image cloud again. However, a useris always free to restart the recommendation service and go back throughthe bootstrap image cloud, if desired.

FIG. 3B depicts an exemplary method for personalizing content for aparticular user using a recommendation image cloud, the methodincluding, at 320, identifying a user profile, at 322, using the userprofile to identify a plurality of images associated with feed content,and, at 324, displaying the plurality of images on a user interface, theplurality of images being grouped and displayed adjacent or in closeproximity with each other in one predefined area to minimize contentbetween the plurality of images so as to minimize navigation methodsrequired to locate the plurality of images. When a user positivelyselects an image, feed content associated with the image can bedisplayed. As mentioned above, if the image and feed content are bothalready displayed, selecting the image may highlight the associated feedcontent. In any case, when a user positively or negatively selects animage, the user profile can be updated accordingly.

In one embodiment, the bootstrap image cloud can be used to develop auser profile, described in further detail below. In embodiments wherethe bootstrap image is related to categories, the category can be addedas a feature to a user profile and affect an associated interest of theuser profile. In embodiments where the bootstrap image has associatedprofile of feature vector(s) and/or interest vector(s), the featurevector(s) and/or interest vector(s) of the bootstrap image can be usedto start or update a user profile.

Turning to FIG. 4A, “what's hot” tabulation 110 has been selected topresent a popularity content page 130 that provides additional contentto a user based on popularity. Popularity can be based on variousdemographics including, but not limited to, what's popular in the user'ssocial network, what's popular in a geographic region (whether globally,nationally, regionally, and/or locally), or what is popular with usersof a particular gender, race, age, religion, interests, and the like.Popularity can be measured by number of views, rankings, number ofcomments, and the like, among the defined demographic. The defaultdemographic can be based on what is popular for the country in which theuser resides. The image popular content 132 and text popular content 134can operate substantially similar to the image and text recommendations114,118 of FIG. 2B.

FIG. 4B depicts an exemplary method for personalizing content for aparticular user using a popularity image cloud, the method including, at402, identifying one or more popular topics, at 404, using the one ormore popular topics to identify a plurality of images associated withthe one or more popular topics, the plurality of images being associatedwith feed content, and at 406, displaying the plurality of images on auser interface, the plurality of images being grouped and displayedadjacent or in close proximity with each other in one predefined area tominimize content between the plurality of images so as to minimizenavigation methods required to locate the plurality of images.

FIG. 5A illustrates a search page 150 that can be accessed, for example,by selecting tabulation 152. The search results page 150 includes asearch field 112 that a user can use to find content of interest. Likethe recommendation page, search results on the search page 150 can bedisplayed by an image search results 154 that pictorially displays thesearch results in the form of images, such as 156. The search images canalso be referred to as a “search image cloud.” Search results page 150may also include search results in the form of text search results 158.Image search results 154 and text search results 158 can operatesubstantially similar to image and/or text recommendations 114, 118 ofFIG. 2B.

FIG. 5B depicts an exemplary method for personalizing content for aparticular user using a search image cloud, the method including, at502, identifying a search request including one or more search terms, at504, using the one or more search terms to generate a search resulthaving feed content, at 506, using the feed content to identify aplurality of images, and at 508, displaying the plurality of images on auser interface, the plurality of images being grouped and displayedadjacent or in close proximity with each other in one predefined area tominimize content between the plurality of images so as to minimizenavigation methods required to locate the plurality of images.

Advantageously, providing the bootstrap image cloud 105, recommendationspage 106, popularity page 130, and/or search page 150 using imagecontent and/or text content, provides various sources of content thatallows a user or third person (i.e., visitor) to visually see what is orpotentially could be important to a user to better personalizerecommendations and searches to a user. User interaction with any ofthese sources affects a user profile, which, in turn, affects subsequentcontent that is presented to the user. For example, when a userinteracts with the popularity page 130 and search page 150, suchinteraction affects content presented on the recommendations page 106.Of course, other ways of recommending and obtaining user interestactivity can be implemented in combination with one or more of thesetypes of content delivery. For example, a wild card page could be addedthat allows a user to simply view an assortment of random content to seeif any of the random content catches the user's interest. Or, the usercould access a topographical page that lists any number of potentialinterests by alphabetical order. Similar to the initial images 104, theuser could select on any of these images and/or text results which wouldprovide additional information to personalize content for a user.

It will be appreciated that the image cloud/text content paradigm may beused in other contexts other than recommendations, popularity, andsearch results. For example, this same paradigm could extend to channelbased content and programming. In one embodiment, a commerce servicemight have a page specifically directed to real estate. When a useraccesses the real estate page, potential real estate recommendations canbe presented to the user based on, among other things, the user'spersonalization profile. Thus, potential real estate content is matchedup with user interests for that particular content page, presentingproperties in an image cloud and presenting text recommendations aboutproperties, schools, or other aspects of that geographical area.

In another example, a page about a particular topic can be programmed topresent an image cloud and text content based on one or more users'interest in that topic. In contrast to a standard dynamic web page thatdisplays preprogrammed images and text about a topic, a communitygenerated page is actually built from what one or more user profilesthat have a current interest in the topic as opposed to what aneditorial publisher ‘thinks’ readers are interested in. Thus, thecommunity-generated page will dynamically change as the interests of thecommunity changes.

The content presented to a user can depend on the classification of theuser. For known users and anonymous users, the personalizationattributes of the recommendations page 106, popularity page 130 andsearch page 150 will be fully functional based on the user's profile.However, for opt-out users where a user profile is unavailable, othermechanisms are used to provide content for the popularity page 130 andsearch page 150 so that they appear to have personalization attributes.

Social Interactivity

The present invention allows for various levels of social interactivitywith regard to active and passive personalization. The above describesproviding bootstrap, recommended, popular, and searched content in theform of image clouds and/or text based on a user's interests. Anotherway to view a user's interests is to view a user profile. FIGS. 6Athrough 12 illustrate various aspects of social interactivity that canoccur through displaying a user's and other third party profiles.

Besides directly accessing a user profile page, the user can access herprofile while in other content areas of the site. For example, as theuser is interacting with the dynamic aspects of the recommendation pagedescribed above, a social network icon (not shown) can be located invarious content areas of the personalization service to allow a user tobe directed to her user profile. As shown in FIG. 6A, a user'spersonalization page may have a user profile, denoted as “brainwaves”tab 184 that redirects the user to her own profile image cloud.

As shown in FIG. 6A, profile image cloud 200 depicts a user's interestspictorially via one or more images 202. The difference between images202 of FIG. 6A and images 114 of FIG. 2B is that in the profile imagecloud, the images 202 are not necessarily tied to feeds that arecurrently available. That is, the images 202 visually represent a truedepiction of a user's interests at that point in time. A profile imagecloud enables the user or a third party to easily capture the userinterests in a visually appealing manner as well as conveying a largeamount of information than could be conveyed using simple text. Theimages in the profile image cloud are grouped and displayed adjacent orin close proximity with each other in one predefined area. The placementof the images minimizes content such as text, spacing or other content,between the images. Thus, a profile image cloud visually representsinformation about the user in the form of images in a manner that a useror other third party can easily comprehend the images. Such userinformation that can be visually represented by an image cloud includesinformation about topics or categories, brands, sports teams,activities, hobbies, TV shows, movies, personalities, or any otherinterest that can be visually depicted.

In addition to visually depicting a user's interests, the images in theprofile image cloud are interactive which enables a user or third partyto view and/or select images in the image cloud without requiring a useror other third party to use extensive navigation methods to find images,such as scroll bars, excessive mousing movements, extensive windowresizing, or the like. Thus, the profile image cloud also minimizes thenavigation methods required to locate and/or select the plurality ofimages visually representing information of interest about the user.

FIG. 6B depicts an exemplary method for personalizing content for aparticular user using a user profile image cloud, the method including,at 602 identifying a user profile, at 604, using the user profile toidentify a plurality of images associated with the user profile, and, at606, displaying the plurality of images on a user interface, theplurality of images being grouped and displayed adjacent or in closeproximity with each other in one predefined area to minimize contentbetween the plurality of images so as to minimize navigation methodsrequired to locate the plurality of images.

The size, shape and/or layout of the images in the user profile imagecloud can vary based on design considerations. For example, not allimages in an image cloud may have the same level of user interest.Profile image cloud 200 illustrates that images can be displayed indifferent sizes, which is one example of varying the display of imagesto reflect varying levels of interest (with larger sizing reflectinggreater interest and smaller sizing reflecting less interest). In oneembodiment, interest level can be based on how many of the features ofan image match the features of a user profile.

The method further includes detecting a change in the user profile,selecting new images to be included in the plurality of images, anddynamically changing the display of the plurality of images with theselected new images in a manner substantially real-time with thedetected change in the user profile. Thus, the profile image cloud canbe refreshed as the user's profile and interests change. The user'sprofile can change based on active and passive personalization, asdiscussed below. Having image clouds that are interactive is one exampleof active personalization. The user can interact with her own userprofile as well as the user profiles of other third parties, such as,but not limited to, buddies, celebrities, and communities, as will nowbe described.

FIG. 6A also illustrates a user's social network 206, which lists one ormore buddy icons 208. As shown in FIG. 6A, the icons 208 related to eachbuddy may reflect how similar or dissimilar the buddy is to the user.Displaying buddies based on similarities/dissimilarities provides aninteractive way for the user to identify with buddies in her socialnetwork. Buddy displays can be dynamically updated in real time so thatthe user can view how her buddies' interest compare to hers over time.While FIG. 6A shows that similarity/dissimilarity of buddies is shown bydisplaying icons 208 of different sizes (with larger size indicatingmore similarity and smaller size depicted less similarity), othermethods can also be used including, but not limited to sizing, differenticonic symbols, color, graphics, text, transparency, and the like.

Upon selecting a first buddy 208 a, as shown in FIG. 7A, the buddy'sprofile image cloud 210 is displayed containing images 212. A user isthus able to view the buddy's interests. For example, if it is nearingthe buddy's birthday, the user may view a buddy's interests to get ideasfor gifts. The user can also approve/disapprove of as many of the images212 displayed in the buddy's profile image cloud as desired via a userinterest icon 214 that appears when the user hovers over the image. FIG.7A illustrates the user selecting image 212 for buddy 208 a. The usercan also select image 213 for buddy 208 b as shown in FIG. 7B and image215 for buddy 208 d as shown in FIG. 7C. In other words, the user canview and/or comment on the images in any of her buddy's profile imageclouds. Advantageously, this provides a simple, visually appealingmethod for allowing a user to view, adopt, and/or disagree with theirfriends' interests.

FIG. 6A also illustrates that profile image clouds of other entities mayalso be viewed and/or accessed by the user. For example, celebrities 220is another category in which entities may be identifiable. As shown inFIG. 7D, when the user selects celebrity 220 a, the user can view thecelebrity profile image cloud 222 containing images 224 and canapprove/disapprove of any or all of these images. In one embodiment, acelebrity profile image cloud 218 may not be a true depiction of thecelebrity's interests, but rather a public persona that the celebritywishes to project. For example, a movie star celebrity may only wish tohave predefined features pertaining to material that promotes his/herpublic image represented in the celebrity profile. This illustrates theflexibility of the present invention in a user being allowed to developvarious personas that can be projected via Image clouds. Of course, theability to have multiple personas extends to any user, not justcelebrities. So, if a user wants to make available one persona tocertain members of its social network, but another persona to the restof the world, the user can activate and/or deactivate certain featuresthat the user has in her profile.

Referring back to FIG. 6A, another category in which entities could beplaced is communities 230. Communities include a composite profile oftwo or more entities. For example, the profiles of all of a user'sbuddies may be merged to form a composite profile and displayed via asingle “all buddies” profile icon 230 a. Another type of community canbe created based on geographic region. For example, the system mayprovide a view of the combined user profiles in the community of NewYork City 230 b, or the community of California 230 c, which the usercan select to view an image cloud representing what the collective usersof those regions are currently interested in. Thus, a community profilecan be defined by various demographics including, but not limited to,the user's social network, a geographic region, or users of a particulargender, race, age, interests, and the like.

A user can view and interact with the celebrity and community profilessimilarly to how is done for buddy profiles. Upon receiving these userinterest activities, the system updates the user's profile, which, inturn, updates the user's profile image cloud 200A, shown in FIG. 8. Asshown therein, the user's profile image cloud has changed to reflectimages 212, 213, 215, 224 that are also a part of the user's buddies'profile image clouds. As will be appreciated, by the user adopting theseimages and their corresponding features and/or interests into the user'sown profile, the user's profile will be correspondingly updated.

The user's social network may provide enhanced features which assist auser in identifying third party profiles (including buddy, celebrity andcommunity profiles). As mentioned above, similar or dissimilar profilescan be identified to the user. Similarity can be broadly or morenarrowly tailored depending on the level of profiling utilized. Aparticular user can have more than one profile associated therewith. So,if the user wants comparisons performed based on one or more profiles,the one or more profile can be matched up with third party profileshaving the same feature vector(s) and/or interest vector(s). One exampleof where this can be useful is when a user wants to know which of herbuddies is like-minded right now. When buddies having the same orsimilar profiles identified, the user can start an IM session with oneor more of those buddies. The same methods can be applied to findbuddies who have completely different profiles, celebrities who have thesame profile, a dating prospect who has similar profiles and is in theirsame location, or for other purposes. In one embodiment, the display ofsimilarity or dissimilarity of buddy profiles can be dynamicallyadjusted in real time as the user and the user's buddies change theirinterests over time.

A user may share her updated profile with other users through a sharingtool. The user may also view updated recommended feed content based onthe user's updated profile, such as by selecting an icon 228. FIG. 9illustrates that recommendation content can be dynamically updated basedon changes in the user's profile. FIG. 9 also shows another embodimentfor displaying recommended feed content. As shown, an inbox 166 now hasupdated feed content 170 related to the images that the user acceptedfrom the profiles of other users in her social network. Furthermore, arecommendation image cloud 186 is displayed showing images relating tofeeds currently available related to the user's profile.

The foregoing thus illustrates the ease by which the user can readilyadopt interests in an active and engaging manner using a social network.

Concepts of Personalization

As illustrated in the exemplary screen shots of FIGS. 1 through 9, oneaspect of the present invention is to associate users with personalizedcontent on a real-time basis. The goal of personalization is to createdesirable perceptions and responses from the user and encourage a userto continue to use the system while avoiding those undesirableperceptions that discourage users from using the system.

Desirable Perceptions from the point of view of a user: (1) seeing whatthe user wants; (2) anticipating user interests; (3) changingrecommendations when the user wants; and (4) having a user readeverything recommended. Perceptions to avoid from the point of view ofthe user: (1) avoid delivering the same content; (2) avoid recommendinguseless content; (3) avoid delivering old content when the user reallywants something new; (4) avoid delivering content on only a few of theuser's interests—if the user has a lot of interests, provide content onas many interests as possible; and (5) avoid staying on an interest whenthe user has moved on to generate different interests.

The image clouds used for the initial interests conversation starter(i.e., bootstrap), profiles, recommendations, popularity content, and/orsearch content, facilitate personalization by making the personalizationexperience more appealing and intuitive for the user. Images aregenerally easier for user to quickly assimilate and comprehend than thetext used to describe the same concept. While the image clouds of thepresent invention are not limited to any particular personalizationsystem, one exemplary network environment for implementing apersonalization system will now be described.

FIG. 10 is a diagram of an exemplary embodiment of a system 1000 forpersonalizing content to a user. As shown in FIG. 10, images and feedcontent, such as articles in an online publication, are stored in adatabase or other content repository 1004 at a content site 1002.Content site 1002 also includes content server 1003, which is coupled tocontent database 1004. The embodiment described herein uses the Internet1015 (or any other suitable information transmission medium) to transmitthe contents from content server 1003 to a computer 1010, where thecontents are viewed by a user via a web browser, or the like. In anexemplary embodiment, HTTP protocol is used for fetching and displayingthe contents, but any suitable content display protocol mayalternatively be employed.

In order to personalize the information for a particular user, a loginserver 1013 is provided to identify each unique user through a loginprocedure. Of course, some users will not be identifiable but may stilluse the system as an anonymous user. In the presently describedembodiment, information associated with a given user is divided into oneor more databases (or any other type of content repository). One server1006 contains information facilitating user login and passwordregistration, and a second database 1007 is used to store user profiledata. Profile database 1007 contains user profiles, versions of userprofiles (or snapshots), and earmarks separate user profiles. Data inprofile database 1007 is used by a ranking engine 1005 to rank content,contained in content database 1004, for each user.

Various other databases may hold information that can contribute topersonalizing content for a user. A dictionary database 1011 storesthousands of potential features. Currently, the dictionary database 1011can use a repository of over 25,000 computer-generated features.Additionally, the present invention allows a user to add to thisrepository. For example, when a user types in a word that is not foundin the repository, but the system determines that that word is asignificant term that should be included in the interest, that term canbe added to the repository for future reference. Terms in the repositorycan include lists of significant persons or places, for example,musicians, rock groups, sports figures, political figures and otherfamous people. Terms in the repository can also be in differentlanguages.

A user history database 1014 holds information relating to a userhistory where for users who are anonymous. A relevance database 1012holds data relating to content relevance values which represent thestrength of reader's preference for viewing a given content item. Forexample, the relevance database may hold rankings, read history, and thelike for particular content items.

The present invention also contemplates that advertisement content canbe personalized and presented to a user. Thus, as shown in FIG. 10,ranking engine 1005 may communicate with an advertisement database 1009and advertisement server 1008 to rank and present advertisement content(whether images, feeds, or other type of content), to a user.

While ranking engine 1005 IS shown as a single element, ranking engine1005 can include a plurality of servers that are each configured toperform one aspect of personalization in parallel, thus distributing theprocessing requirements. Furthermore, all of the elements shown to theleft of internet 1015 can be part of the same site, or, alternatively,can be distributed across multiple sites and/or third party sites.

Thus, any entity (i.e., users and/or content) can be assigned one ormore features which can then be used to determine interests to generatea profile for that entity. Features can be visible or transparent. Thatis, some features may be viewable, selectable, and/or usable by users.Other features, however, may be unviewable, unselectable, and/orunusable by users. For example, computer generated significant featureswill unlikely be human consumable. However, features such as people,places or categories will likely have a human readable form.

In one embodiment, computer generated interests are created by analyzinga broad set of textual information related to an entity and determiningwhich words and phrases are significant for a particular entity. Forexample, with regard to a group of articles, interests can be definedfor each article and used to distinguish one article from another. Aswill be described below, a composite profile can also be created for thegroup of articles. The computer generated features can be determined byanalyzing articles, search logs, and the like in order to mine thisinformation. In one embodiment, duplicated phrases are eliminated withina particular interest.

In another embodiment, features can be defined from different sourcesother than being computer-generated. For example, users may be able todefine certain features (such as tagging). Or, the features may beavailable from demographic information, such as names or places. Inthese cases, the features may be in human readable form.

In one embodiment, a computer-generated feature software analyzescontent and determines significant words related to these articles. Inone example of an article, features for identified to create a featurevector for the article. In addition, an interest vector for an articlecan be created by counting all the occurrences of each word in thearticle and creating an interest vector whose components comprise theword frequencies. The article can thus be represented by a point in ahigh-dimensional space whose axes represent the words in a givendictionary. The software attempts to eliminate words that are toocommonly used that don't contribute to determining a unique feature(e.g., ‘stop words’ such as “the,” “an,” “and,” etc.). Stems of wordsare used so that, for example, “see” and “seeing” are considered to bethe same word.

The software can identify features such as categories (e.g., science,education, news) and can identify features that are meaningful in thatparticular context. The reverse might also be true where the softwareconcludes, based on identifying certain meaningful words that thecontent item belongs to a particular category. In some cases,recommendations can then be based on a category, which providespotential content recommendations. For example, a user may beginexpressing interest in a particular sports figure. However, if itbecomes apparent that a user wants content about anything relating tothe sports team to which the sports figure belongs, the system canrecommend more content on the feature that IS category-based, ratherthan specifically using the sport figure's name as a feature.

The present invention also assigns an interest weighting to each featurefor each entity or group of entities. In one embodiment, certainfeatures can have a greater weight than others. For example, names ofpeople may carry a greater weight than computer generatedwords/features. Furthermore, interest can be presented both positivelyand negatively. For example, a negative rating from a user may assign anegative interest to a feature.

Thus, embodiments of the invention are directed to determining a set ofsignificant features to create feature vector(s), attaching weighting tofeatures to create interest vector(s), resulting in profiles. Theinvention also includes comparing, combining and/or ranking profiles.Various algorithmic models can be used to implement embodiments of thepresent invention. The present invention contemplates that differenttest implementations could be used with users being able to vote orprovide input on the best implementations. The ‘engine’ that drives thistest bed is relatively flexible and easy to modify so that a reasonablylarge number of permutations can be tried with a flexible user interfacethat allows users to easily provide input.

The system of the present invention performs the above functions byusing feature vector(s) and/or interest vector(s) to create one or moreprofiles for each entity. The profile of an entity forms the input tothe adaptive ranking engine 1005. Since the present invention accountsfor the possibility of negative interests, it is possible to account fornegative data. The output of the ranking engine is a value whichrepresents the strength of a particular user's preference for readingthat particular content item. In this manner, content items of any typecan be rank ordered by the numerical value of the output of the rankingsystem. This allows for comparison-type functionality such as displayingimages in image clouds, how similar/dissimilar entities are from eachother, and the like.

With reference to FIG. 11, together with FIG. 10, an exemplaryembodiment 1100 of processes and systems for generating a feature vectorand an interest vector for a content item is depicted. When a contentservice 1101 (which could be the content site 1002) identifies articlecontent 1102, an interest extractor 1104 (which can be part of rankingengine 1005) evaluates all or some of the article contents 1102 (e.g.,headline, title, lead, summary, abstract, body, comments) to determinefeatures and frequency of features. It may, in some cases, beadvantageous to use more than just the headlines of news articles toperform the profiling because of the small number of words involved. Insuch cases, it is possible to include a summary of the article for usein generating the profile. The full article is likely to be too long andmay slow down the computation of the ranking engine. A summary allows aricher and more specific match to user interests. A summary may consistof the first paragraph of a news story or a more sophisticated naturallanguage processing method may be employed to summarize the articles.Summaries generally lead to better precision in ranking articlesaccording to user preferences than leads but may not be quite as preciseas whole articles. However, the use of summaries is likely to providebetter computational performance than the use of entire articles due tothe fewer number of words involved.

An article 1102 is only one example of an entity that can be evaluatedto generate a profile. Other entities can be used, but for purposes ofthis description, an article will be described. In one embodiment, theinterest extractor 1104 extracts features based on their existence inthe text and/or metadata associated with the entity. The interestextractor 1104 can match every 1, 2 and 3 word phrase against thedictionary 1011 to determine if certain phrases contain significancewithin the article. The interest extractor 1104 can add categoryfeatures based on the source of the article. In one embodiment, thecontent of an article can be normalized to speed of processingrequirement of interest extractor 1104. For example, text can benormalized using, but not limited to lower casing all alpha characters,maintaining all digits, removing all punctuation, removing excess whitespace, removing stopper words, and the like.

The interest extractor 1104 calculates an interest weighting for eachfeature depending on its significance to produce the Profile. Interestscan be attached to the features by various methods based on, but notlimited to, arbitrarily setting an interest for each feature to 1,frequency of occurrence of the feature in the content, location of thefeature III the article (e.g., the title gets more weight than thedescription/summary), bolded text gets more weight, features closer tothe beginning get interest weighting, and the like. Generating profilesfor content items using interest extractor 1104 can be preprocessed andstored in a database, or, can be performed in real-time as the contentitem is identified. In one embodiment, the feature vectors and interestvectors are stored in separate databases with pointers referring to eachother and to their respective content item.

The interest extractor 1104 also identifies a “maximum score” that canbe attributed to an entity by summing the positive interest vectors ofall of the features. This maximum score can then be used to normalizeranking scores. The interest extractor 1104 may also take into accountnegative interest vectors. This can be valuable if contra-indicativefeatures are detected. In the example of ‘fender’ and ‘amps’, ‘fender’can mean a car fender or a brand of sound amplifiers. The distinctionmay be the existence of ‘amps’ contra-indicating cars but positivelyindicating music. Thus, an article profile having one or more featurevectors and one or more interest vectors (denoted as article interests1105) is generated.

A duplicate detection module 1106 (which can also be part of rankingengine 1005) determines whether the article 1102 is a duplicate. Theduplicate detection 1106 accesses an article index 1114. In oneembodiment, the duplicate detection 1106 uses the title and summary ofthe entities or articles to determine if they are duplicate. Theduplicate detection 1106 can be engaged by certain triggers, forexample, if at least 75 percent of the article can be understood usingfeatures (in other words, the system knows enough about the article tounderstand its significance), duplication analysis can occur on thearticle. In another embodiment, duplicate detection 1106 compares thefeature vector and/or interest vector of the article 1102 to all otherpreviously evaluated articles to determine if “sameness” or “importance”exists. In one embodiment, article 1102 may actually be slightlydifferent than another article (e.g., written by different pressagencies). However, if the sameness and importance of both articles aresubstantially the same, the duplicate detection 1106 determines that thetwo articles are duplicates for purposes of determining that a user doesnot want to be presented with two articles having substantially the samecontent and substantially the same importance level assigned to thecontent.

A tolerance range can be established to determine when articles orentities exhibit duplicity. For example, if the two entities beingcompared have a 95% sameness with regard to title/summary evaluation orfeature/interest evaluation, then the articles could be consideredduplicates. Other tolerance ranges are possible, and the user may beable to define the stringency level of the tolerance range.

Thus, if duplicate detection 1106 identifies article 1102 as aduplicate, the article 1102 can be stored as a duplicate set 1108. Inone embodiment, duplicate articles are stored in sets, only the originalarticle in the set being indexed by indexer 1112 (which can be part ofranking engine 1005). Indexer 1112 optimizes indexed search performanceso that the ‘best’ article in the set is returned when the indexedarticle is recommended. ‘Best’ can be defined as the article from themost reliable source or the most recent version of the article.

In one embodiment, a source quality module 1110 can be used to determineif two articles having similar sameness and interest have differentquality. That is, one may come from a more reliable source than theother (e.g., Reuters v. blog). So, if there are duplicate articles andarticle 1102 comes from a more high quality source, then the bestarticle will be indexed by indexer 1112 as the ‘best’ article in the setto be returned. In one embodiment, the ‘best’ article may be stored in acache to speed retrieval of the article.

Indexer 1112 creates an inverted index 1114 of the interests of anentity or article. The first time an article 1102 is identified (i.e.,not a duplicate), indexer 1112 indexes article 1102 along with anycorresponding profiles, metadata, or other searchable data and storesthis indexed data in article index 1114 so that the article 1102 can beeasily identified in storage or otherwise accessible by the systemand/or a user. The next time a duplicate of article 1102 is identified,the indexed data is already stored in article index 1114. So, theduplicate article 1102 can simply be stored in a duplicate set with theoriginal article 1102. The duplicate article 1102 and the originalarticle 1102 are analyzed to determine which comes from the mostreliable source. The highest quality article is flagged to be returnedwhenever a request is made to access an article from that duplicate set.Subsequent duplicate articles are analyzed to determine whether they arehigher quality than the previous highest quality article and, if so, areflagged as the current highest quality article. The information induplicate set 1108 and/or article index 1114 then becomes available forfinding profiles for static entities, combining profiles of staticentities together with other static entities and/or dynamic entities,and/or comparing and ranking profiles of static entities and/or dynamicentities to each other. For example, a user could identify a feature andthe indexer would return all of the entities that have an interest inthat feature.

FIG. 12 depicts an example of profile in a two-dimensional form with ahorizontal continuum of features representing potentially thousands ofwords and vertical bars representing the interest assigned to eachfeature or word. Where the horizontal continuum represents potentialwords in a dictionary, each word assigned to an ith position, and thehorizontal line represents a zero value vector and above the horizontalcontinuum represent a positive value and below the horizontal continuumrepresents a negative value, the profile of the entity shown in FIG. 12could be represented as

(0, 5, 0, 0, −3, 0, 3, 0, 0, −5, 0, 0, 4, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, −1, 0, 0, 0, 3. . . ) where a position, 0 or negative value is placed in each Wiposition to represent the level of importance of that feature. Theinterest vector is based on the frequency of that term in the contentitem, although the interest vector could be based on other factors asdiscussed above. In some embodiments, static content may have mostlyzeros and positive values, although, as shown here, it is possible forstatic content to also have negative value associated therewith. Wordsin the content that are not in the dictionary can either be ignored, orthe dictionary can be expanded to contain additional Wi words, asmentioned above.

It will be appreciated that the feature vectors and interest vectors canbe represented in three-dimensional form. In the three-dimensionalanalysis, content items containing similar concepts are found closetogether. On the other hand, dissimilar content items are far apart asgiven by a distance measure in this space. A typical metric, well-knownin the art, representing the distance between two content items in thisvector space is formed by the normalized dot product (also known as theinner product) of the two vectors representing the content items.

Generally, it is desirable to enable profiles to have both featurevectors and interest vectors that are reflective of the amount ofinterest that a particular user or content item has for a particularfeature. However, in some embodiments, it may be easier to simply useonly a feature vector with a binary frequency (i.e., a count of either 1or 0) for each word as a very good approximation. For example, forheadlines and leads, word frequencies are rarely greater than one. Inthis sense, the feature vector would also produce a binary interestdescriptor, so as to simplify implementation of the present invention.

The present system uses profiles to generate personalized content. Userprofiles can be generated in various ways. In one example, a userprofile may be a combination of all of the profiles of the content itemsthat have been viewed by the user with old content items eventuallydropping off the user profile so as to be more reflective of a user'scurrent interests. In another embodiment, user profiles can be acombination of user viewing history as well as user ratings so that theuser profile can have negative interest values associated therewith todetermine what the user is not interested in. User profiles can begenerated by evaluating active and passive behavior of the user. Userprofiles are also able to reflect positive interest in certain contentas well as negative interest.

Generally, a user profile can generally have long feature vector(s)and/or interest vector(s) while the length of a feature vector and/orinterest vector for other content types such as feed content, article,documents, images, and the like, is generally shorter. Therefore, thepresent system measures distance between the long vectors of the userprofile and the short vectors of other content items. These shortvectors, in one embodiment of the invention, may have binary componentsrepresenting the positive presence, or negative presence of each word,thereby simplifying the computation of content relevance. The rankingengine may use the profiles for users to identify one or more contentitems that the user would likely be interested in reading. Variousalgorithms can be used by ranking engine 1005 such as, but not limitedto, Rocchio's method, Naive Bayes or other Bayesian techniques, SupportVector Machine (SVM) or other neural network techniques, and the like.

Since the present invention is not dependent on a particular type ofpersonalization algorithm to generate content, further personalizationalgorithms will not be described in order to prevent obscuring thepresent invention.

Dynamic Profiles for Dynamic Entities

The present invention also allows a dynamic profile to be created fordynamic entities, which dynamic profile can vary in real-time based onidentified short term and/or long term interests. The present inventionprovides monitoring and learning about a dynamic entity using indirect(or passive) and direct (or active) techniques. Both passive and activecan implement negative and positive feedback. Because a person is themost typical example of a dynamic entity, the term “user” will be usedto refer to a dynamic entity.

Direct/Active Indirect/Passive Negative Positive Negative Positivefeedback feedback feedback feedback

Direct or active methods of identifying features/interests are similarto the method described above for static entities. Active techniquesinclude allowing a user to actually input information such aslikes/dislikes (such as via a thumbs up/thumbs down interface). Forexample, in one embodiment, the user enters text describing herinterests (or disinterests) and, for example, an interest extractorextracts features from the input text, such as a search term entry, oran interest extract extracts text from content. Active can also includeallowing a user to create a profile indicating likes/dislikes,monitoring text or clicks that a user inputs, as well as obtainingnegative feedback such as responding to a survey. Active can also beimplicitly implied by what a user selects. In addition, the user canview her dynamic profile and the user can correct/modify the profile,which would provide another avenue of active personalization.

Adding weights for direct features can be handled similarly to staticentities such as, but not limited to, arbitrarily set to 1, the numberof occurrences, and the like. Modifications to weights can be based on,but not limited to, an entity click multiplier, a thumbs up multiplier,a thumbs down multiplier, a search term multiplier, a descriptionmultiplier, and the like.

Indirect or passive methods of identifying features/interests occur whenthe profile expresses interest (or disinterest) in other entities, suchthat the interests of the selected entity are added to the dynamicprofile. Passive techniques include monitoring the behavior of a dynamicentity without requiring the dynamic entity to actively provideinformation to the profile up dater, such as monitoring searches,clicks, articles accessed by a dynamic entity, etc. With passive, theuser does not do anything to personalize and passive feedback isgenerally positive. Negative passive is difficult to ascertain, butmight be done if the profile updater recommends something and the userdoes not respond, the profile updater can downgrade a particular profilefeature in short term and/or long term.

Adding weights for indirect features includes, but is not limited toarbitrarily set to 1, the weight of the feature in the selected entity,some value based on how much weight the feature already has in theprofile, and the like. For example, if the profile indicates a stronglike of a feature, but the feature appears in a disliked entity, perhapsit should not be downgraded. It may be better to downgrade only featuresthat the user has previously been ambivalent about or disliked.

For dynamic entities which learn their interests there needs to be acorresponding concept of unlearning interests. The user will loseinterest in certain features just as they gain interest in otherfeatures. The system should learn to stop recommending things that theuser has lost interest in. Thus, for both direct and indirecttechniques, positive and negative weights may be used for particularfeatures. Learning algorithms can learn whether passive factors shouldbe given more weight than active factors and vice versa. In addition, itis important to allow for negative information to allow the system tocontradict itself in order to unlearn things about a user so that therecommendation system doesn't keep sending the user content in which shehas no interest.

Loss of interest can be determined passively and actively. One exampleof passive unlearning is when the user stops clicking on recommendedarticles reflecting that interest. An example of active unlearning iswhen the user thumbs down on recommended articles reflecting thatinterest. In order to passively reduce interests, a duration of interestcan be defined. The system can be configured to use un-reiteratedinterests for a specified amount of time, such as, but not limited to,over lifetime of profile, based on clock time (days, weeks), or based oninteractions (clicks, read of articles). In one embodiment, intereststhat are rarely reflected in articles (long tail interests) can also beconsidered. Ideally, the system does not want to forget about thoseinterests strictly by time, because they may not show up often enough.This unlearning effect can be achieved multiple ways such as, but notlimited to a disinterest model that reduces an interest's weightwhenever an entity selected by those interests is presented and is notclicked on, a half-life model that reduces the weight of all interestsover time independent of whether any entities chosen by them have beendisplayed. MAXIMUM WEIGHTINGS

In one embodiment, a feature can have a maximum interest level. Amaximum interest level can be beneficial where it is know that a userhas a lot of interest in a particular feature and to provide areasonable measurement of interest. Weights obtained from direct andindirect techniques for a particular feature can also be given a maximumin order to limit the extent to which a feature can dominate an entity.As mentioned above, actions such as, but not limited to, article reads,thumbs up/thumbs down, search, image click, refreshing, and the like,can cause a change in a feature's weight.

Possible ways to implement maximums include, but are not limited to, ahard maximum where no feature can exceed this weight, a soft maximumwhere after reaching the maximum, the weight increases at a much slowerrate, a soft and a hard maximum where features that reach the softmaximum increase much more slowly but stop at the hard maximum, and thelike. Weights can approach maximums using, but not limited to, astraight line where weights are directly added together, a slowing curvewhere new weights are reduced before being added so that they becomesmaller as the maximum is approached, and the like. Maximum weightingalso applies to negative interest activity.

Thus, in one embodiment, repeated clicks or interest activity by a useris measured by an asymptotic curve theory that the more the userexpresses interest activity, the closer it reaches a maximum amount. So,for example, in one particular embodiment, no soft limit is applied, ahard limit is applied of 10 times a thumbs up weight, and a slowingcurve is applied where weights are reduced by (max weight−currentweight)/max weight. Thus, the first click on “Tom Cruise” may beassigned an interest level of 4, the next click only increases theinterest level to a 6, the following click increases to an 8 until amaximum of 10 is reached. Thus, each click reduces the effect of theinterest level by a decreases amount and will never exceed a maximuminterest level. In addition to this half-life model that has just beendescribed, other algorithms for determining maximum weights include, butare not limited to, Bayesian, naive Bayesian, perceptron, and othertheories.

Short Term Versus Long Term Profiles

In some embodiments, it may be desirable to identify both a short termand a long term profile. So, a dynamic profile can be created based onactive/passive personalization in which a number of features areassociated with each user. Dynamic entities can usually be assumed tohave short and/or long term interests, i.e., what the entity isinterested in right now and what interests define it over the long haul.For a system to be effective, it is necessary to recommend entitieswhich have relevance to both long and short term interests. Perhaps longterm interests are more effective at giving a person a ‘start ofsession’ list of entities. But short term interests may be better atrecommending entities that match a ‘train of thought’.

Thus, in embodiments where users are the dynamic entity, there arevarious levels of profiling that the profile updater may perform:

1) Opt-out user—profile updater can't create profiles for these types ofusers. However, these types of users are allowed to access otherinterest sets.

2) Short term profile—this represents what the user is currentlyinterested in right now, but may also be a sporadic interest. However,there are specific things that can occur with a short term profile.

3) Long term profile—includes long term interests so that recommendedcontent is better targeted to the user and adjusts and learns as theuser's interests changes over time. Thus, over time, the long termfeatures will change as well as the weights associated with eachfeature.

Thus, different types of users can be identified. Known users andanonymous users can have short term and/or long term profiles attachedto them. Known users are, for examples, users who may have registeredfor an account which identifies information about the user. Anonymoususers may not be identifiable by name or other demographic information,but may be identifiable through other tracking technology such as, butnot limited to, cookies. Once a dynamic profile is generated, there arevarious things you can do with short term and/or long term profiles. Forexample, a search engine can provide content based on a user's longterm/short term profile including web pages, images, video, RSSarticles, advertising. Short term provides immediate recommendationswhile long term provides consistent content. In another example, basedon just short term profile, (i.e., train of thought processes), if auser clicks on something, the search engine can try to anticipate wherethe user is going. Each subsequent click then changes the short termprofile and the search engine then adjusts accordingly.

The long term profile is simply a set of interests. So, to store it, theengine creates a string equivalent of each interest and concatenatesthem together into a string representing the set. In one embodiment, aninterest can be represented as:

-   -   A feature ID an integer unique within its feature set    -   Positive Weight an integer value of the positive weight    -   Negative Weight an integer value of the negative weight    -   Age an integer value representing an aging value of the interest        (used for unlearning)        A short term profile can be stored similarly to long term        profile, but in a non-persistent memory such as a cache. It will        be appreciated that the short term and/or long term profiles can        be updated periodically including, but not limited to, whenever        any change is detected in the session, every N changes, whenever        a significant change is detected (e.g., interests have changed        significantly enough to warrant a change in profile), at the end        of a session, and the like.

In one embodiment, the recommendation engine uses both long and shortterm interest sets. Only the long term interests are remembered acrosssessions. On session start, the long term interest set is copied intothe short term interest set. Recommendations are always made from theshort term interest set. Long term interests are stored to persistentmemory every 5 changes and at end of session (no activity for 30minutes). Of course, other configurations of settings can apply todecrease processing power and/or achieve particular results.

Where both short and long term profiles are used, they may differ in howthey react to learning interests. The long term set may try to damp outfluctuations in the profile. The short term may enhance them. A user'slong term interests may not be greatly affected by a single interactionbut rather build up over time and stabilize, only changing when a newinterest is introduced. Even then, a new interest could only affect thelong term profile significantly if the interest is re-iterated severaltimes. However, short term interests can be very dynamic and reflectstrongly whatever the user is currently interested in. Short terminterests only learn over the lifetime of a session, not the lifetime ofan entity. Thus, depending on whether short term or long term interestsare being used and/or affected, it may or may not be required to storedata between sessions.

The tables below depict one embodiment of a short term and a long termprofile at time T₀ and time T₁. The table show that in one embodiment, aprofile can include a number of features, with each feature beingassociated with a channel or topic. Also associated with each feature isa weight, resulting in an interest set of the combined features/weights.The following assumes that the user has a long term profile and hasstarted a new session. At T₀, the short term profile and the long termprofile are essentially the same. In contrast, supposed at T₁ a user hasselected an article relating to news about a major basketball game, thedynamic profile the short term profile may change drastically, as shownat time T₁ while the long term profile may change only moderately.

Dynamic profile for User A at Time T₀ Channel Feature Long Term ShortTerm Sports Basketball 75% 75% Cars Ferrari 65% 65% EntertainmentConcert Tickets 15% 15%

Dynamic profile for User A at Time T₁ Channel Feature Long Term ShortTerm Sports Basketball 85% 100% Cars Ferrari 55% 0% EntertainmentConcert Tickets 10% 0% News Article 95% 100%

In one embodiment, every interaction updates both the long and shortterm interests. The short term interests receive an exaggerated impact.User activity can also affect the user's short term profile. Forexample, if a user just reads an article, they only get a certain amountof weight affect. However, if the user clicks on something in thearticle, there is a larger impact on the weight. Other user interestactivity can be assigned different positive and/or negative weightmultipliers such as, but not limited to, thumbs up/thumbs down,rankings, clicks throughs, hovering, and the like.

FIGS. 13A through 13C illustrate an embodiment of a short term and longterm profile that change over time. As shown in FIG. 13A, when a userstarts a session, a short term profile is created for the session, whichreflects the same interest set as the long term profile. FIG. 13Aillustrates that the short term and long term profiles can be acontinuum of features and the bars represent the user's interest in aparticular feature at the start of the session.

FIG. 13B illustrates the change to the short term and long term profileafter a user activity. The hatched bars illustrate the effect of the newactivity. When a user clicks on a particular feature (that may or maynot already be in the interest set), the detected interest activityaffects both the short term profile and the long term profile. However,the short term profile is affected by a larger degree than the long termprofile—that is, the short term profile is more reactive. Thus, asillustrated in FIG. 13B, the hatched bars on the short term profile arelonger than the hatched bars on the long term profile to reflect ahigher reactivity. In one embodiment, an initial reactivity setting isto have the short term profile react twice as much as the long termprofile. However, iterative analysis can determine to what degree theshort term profile and long term profile should react.

Now suppose that the user clicks on another feature that hasn't beenidentified before. The short term profile and long term profile willreact as shown in FIG. 13C. As time goes on, user activity or inactivitycan cause the weighting of the features to increase or decrease.

The foregoing is intended to show that the short term profile and longterm profile behave independently from each other. As shown in the tablebelow, the learning and unlearning algorithms for short and long termprofiles can be separate and independent from each other.

Short Term Profile Long Term Profile Learning algorithm Learningalgorithm Unlearning algorithm Unlearning algorithmThat is, in one embodiment, the learning algorithm for the short termprofile can be different than the learning algorithm for the long termprofile. Further, in one embodiment, the learning algorithm for theshort term profile can be different than the unlearning algorithm forthe same short term profile. The same could hold true for the long termprofile. To summarize, the short term profile and long term profile canlearn and unlearn differently from each other and from within theprofile itself.

FIG. 14 illustrates an exemplary method for personalizing content for aparticular user using both long and short term profiles, the methodincluding, at 1402, identifying a long term profile having one or morefeatures in a feature set and a long term level of importance associatedwith each term in the feature set and, at 1404, identifying a short termprofile having one or more features in the feature set and a short termlevel of importance associated with each term in the feature set.Examples of long and short term profiles may be seen in FIGS. 13A and13D. The method further includes, at 1406, identifying input related tothe display of the one or more content items on the user interface, and,at 1408, using the input to modify the short term level of importanceand long term level of importance associated with each term in thefeature set to form a modified user interest set.

Updating Profiles

With regard to FIG. 15, systems and methods 1550 for processing input bya dynamic entity are illustrated. In one embodiment, the input is a userclicking on another entity in order to access the content. In thisexample, the click 1552 accesses an article contents 1554 (e.g., title,summary, abstract, body) to determine features and interests. An article1554 is only one example of an entity that can be accessed. Otherentities can be used, but for purposes of this description, an articlewill be described.

With the selection of (or clicking on) the article 1554, a request issent to interest extractor 1556. The request includes the article 1554(e.g., text). The interest extractor 1556 operates similarly to interestextractor 1104 (FIG. 11) to identify an interest set 1558 associatedwith the article. If article has previously been evaluated for interests(e.g., FIG. 11), then the process may skip this evaluation step andaccess article interests by accessing article index 1114 (see FIG. 11).

However, in some embodiments, even if the article itself already has aninterest set, that instance of a user clicking on a particular textualportion of the article may assign even greater weight to that feature,making the interest set even different than what may be stored and/orevaluated previously for that article. In another embodiment, thearticle might be only a piece of a larger entity. For example, thelarger entity might be a search result, and the user may select onlycertain textual portion of the search results. While the larger searchresult might have a certain interest set, the particular portionselected (or clicked on) by the user might have a very differentinterest set.

A profile updater 1560 then accesses a user history 1562 that may bestored in a database 1564 and updates the user's dynamic profileincluding long term interests and short term interests 1566 and storesthe updated profile in database 1568. Profile updater 1560 uses theinterests of an article and merges it into the interests of the user.For example, profile updater 1560 can add newly read or rated articlesto the user's history. The short term interest thus persists as long asthe user is logged into a particular session. The long term interestspersist even after a user has logged out of a session and can be storedin database 1568. In one embodiment, a long term interest may changeonly if significant changes occur. Significance can be based on thelikelihood that recommendations will be modified after the change. Inone embodiment, where the user selects on multiple entities desiring tocombine their profiles, the profile updater 1560 may create a combinedprofile specific to that particular request and store the profile indatabase 1568.

It will be appreciated that the article 1554 represents any entity fromwhich features and/or interest can be identified. For example, theentity may be another user with a dynamic profile that reflectsinterests. Further, the user could select multiple different entities,in which case, the profile updater 1560 could be modified to combine theinterests of the multiple different entities and/or user.

Third Party Profiles

The present invention also allows the use of a profile of a third partythat is different from the user to be accessed by the user for contentrecommendation and other purposes. The users who may access the thirdparty profile include users who have their own long and/or short termprofile and opt-out users who do not have a profile as previouslydescribed.

For example, in one embodiment, a user may have a short term profilethat does not necessarily correspond with the user's long term profile.This may be due to the user having a sudden interest in a new subjectthat she has not previously had an interest in. As discussed above, theshort term profile is typically much more reactive than a long termprofile. Accordingly, in this situation, the long term profile may notbe useful in helping the system provide relevant content related to thesudden new interest. This is especially true for a unique, one timeinterest that may or may not become part of the user's long termprofile.

Thus, in the event that an interest is identified that does not comportwith the user's long term profile, the present invention allows thesystem to access a third party user's long term profile that hasfeatures that substantially match those of the short term profile of theuser. In other words, the system allows the user to access the long termprofile of a third party user who is an expert in the subject matter ofthe user's new interest. Since the third party user has built up anexpertise in the user's new interest based on the expert'spassive/active interests as previously described, the user is able touse the third party expert's long term profile to obtain recommendationsfor content that is related to the new interest. As will be appreciated,the third party expert's long term profile may include content relatedto the user's short term profile (e.g., the sudden, new interest) whichis lacking in the user's own long term profile. Content that can beincluded in the third party expert's long term profile can include webpages, articles, advertising, image clouds, and various other types ofcontent as known to one of skill in the art and as previously describedin this specification.

In some embodiments, the identity of the third party expert may remaincompletely unknown to the user. This is beneficial to third partyexperts who wish to remain anonymous for security related purposes. Inother embodiments, however, the system may identify the third partyexpert and may facilitate communication between the user and the thirdparty expert. If the third party expert is presently online, the usercan initiate an IM or chat conversation with the third party expert. Insome embodiments, the system may also indicate the physical location ofthe third party expert.

In other embodiments, the user's short term and/or long term profilesmay be updated based on the user's interaction with the third partyexpert's long term profile, while in other embodiments the user's shortterm and/or long term profiles will not be changed. The system may alsolimit the amount of time that content based on the third party expert'slong term profile is provided to the user. This predetermined amount oftime ensures that the user does not continually receive content on thesudden, new idea as the user likely may not have a long term interest inthe subject matter.

Turning now to FIG. 16, a method to personalize content for a particularuser using a computer system including a user interface configured todisplay content is illustrated. The method includes, at 1602,identifying one or more features of a short term profile of a user thatare not included in a long term profile of the user. For example, theuser's short term profile may include the sudden, new interestpreviously described while the user's long term profile may not includethe sudden, new interest. The method also includes, at 1604, using theone or more features to identify one or more third party profiles havingfeatures that substantially match the one or more features of the user'sshort term profile and at 1606 accessing the identified one or morethird party profiles. For example, the system may identify and accessthe third-party expert's long term profile as previously discussed. Themethod further includes, at 1608, providing one or more content itemsincluded in the third party profile to the user, where the one or morecontent items have associated features that match the one or morefeatures of the short term profile. For instance, the system may provideto the user web pages, articles, and the like that are associated withthe third party expert's long term profile that matches the sudden, newinterest of the user.

In other embodiments, the present invention allows for opt-out users toaccess a third party profile for content recommendation. As discussedabove, an opt-out user is a user who does not have her own profile.Accordingly, there is no comparing or merging of the user's profile withother profiles. However, allowing the opt-out user access to the thirdparty profile provides at least some level of personalization for theopt-out user without updating any particular profile.

In one embodiment, the system allows an opt-out user to view aparticular profile to find out what the owner of the profile isinterested in. For example, an opt-out user may access the profile of afriend to see what types of content the friend is currently interestedin. This information may then be used by the opt-out user to get giftideas that the owner of the profile is interested in. In like manner,the opt-out user may access a third party profile belonging to apotential date partner. The opt-out user may see what types of contentthe potential date partner is interested in when planning activities forthe date. It will be appreciated that the present invention coversnumerous other scenarios in which an opt-out user access a third partyprofile to determine what the owner of the profile is interested in.

In other embodiments, the system allows an opt-out user to temporarilyuse the profiles of third party users or communities such as thosepreviously described. In this way, the opt-out user is able to see whatcontent would be recommended to the third party user and/or community.This allows the opt-out user to then access content of interest based onwhat would be recommend to those third party users or communities basedon what is in their profiles. The opt-out user would view therecommendations and access the content in the manner previouslydescribed. For instance, in some embodiments the recommended contentwould be displayed for the opt-out user on the system user interface.

For example, an opt-out user may temporarily access the profile offriend or relative to see what types of content would be recommended tothat person. Alternatively, the opt-out user may temporarily access theprofile of a celebrity to determine types of content would berecommended to the celebrity. The opt-out user may also temporarilyaccess the profile of a community such as New York to determine whattypes of content would be recommended to the community. In all of thesescenarios, the opt-user may then access the content that is recommendedbased on features included in the profile the opt-user has temporarilyaccessed. As mentioned, this allows an opt-out user who does not wanther own profile to still enjoy some level of content personalization asthe content recommendation and any subsequent content that is viewed isbased on the profile of a person, celebrity, and/or community that is ofat least some interest to the opt-out user.

Turning now to FIG. 17, a method to personalize content using a computersystem including a user interface configured to display content for aparticular user that does not have a profile is illustrated. The methodincludes, at 1702, accessing one or more third party profiles that arenot a profile of the user. For example, the opt-out user may access theprofile of a third party user, celebrity, and/or community as previouslydescribed. The method further includes, at 1704, using the accessedthird party profile to identify a plurality of content items forrecommendation based on a feature set of the third party profile. Forexample, the system may identify content items to recommend to theopt-out user based on features of the profiles that have been accessed.Finally, in some embodiments, the method, at 1706, may display theplurality of recommended content items for the use of the user on a userinterface. For instance, the system may display the recommended contentitems to the opt-out user on the system's user interface as previouslydescribed.

Embodiments include general-purpose and/or special-purpose devices orsystems that include both hardware and/or software components.Embodiments may also include physical computer-readable media and/orintangible computer-readable media for carrying or havingcomputer-executable instructions, data structures, and/or data signalsstored thereon. Such physical computer-readable media and/or intangiblecomputer-readable media can be any available media that can be accessedby a general purpose or special purpose computer. By way of example, andnot limitation, such physical computer-readable media can include RAM,ROM, EEPROM, CD-ROM or other optical disk storage, magnetic disk storageor other magnetic storage devices, other semiconductor storage media, orany other physical medium which can be used to store desired data in theform of computer-executable instructions, data structures and/or datasignals, and which can be accessed by a general purpose or specialpurpose computer. Within a general purpose or special purpose computer,intangible computer-readable media can include electromagnetic means forconveying a data signal from one part of the computer to another, suchas through circuitry residing in the computer.

When information is transferred or provided over a network or anothercommunications connection (either hardwired, wireless, or a combinationof hardwired or wireless) to a computer, hardwired devices for sendingand receiving computer-executable instructions, data structures, and/ordata signals (e.g., wires, cables, optical fibers, electronic circuitry,chemical, and the like) should properly be viewed as physicalcomputer-readable mediums while wireless carriers or wireless mediumsfor sending and/or receiving computer-executable instructions, datastructures, and/or data signals (e.g., radio communications, satellitecommunications, infrared communications, and the like) should properlybe viewed as intangible computer-readable mediums. Combinations of theabove should also be included within the scope of computer-readablemedia.

Computer-executable instructions include, for example, instructions,data, and/or data signals which cause a general purpose computer,special purpose computer, or special purpose processing device toperform a certain function or group of functions. Although not required,aspects of the invention have been described herein in the generalcontext of computer-executable instructions, such as program modules,being executed by computers, in network environments and/or non-networkenvironments. Generally, program modules include routines, programs,objects, components, and content structures that perform particulartasks or implement particular abstract content types.Computer-executable instructions, associated content structures, andprogram modules represent examples of program code for executing aspectsof the methods disclosed herein.

Embodiments may also include computer program products for use in thesystems of the present invention, the computer program product having aphysical computer-readable medium having computer readable program codestored thereon, the computer readable program code comprising computerexecutable instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause thesystem to perform the methods of the present invention.

The present invention may be embodied in other specific forms withoutdeparting from its spirit or essential characteristics. The describedembodiments are to be considered in all respects only as illustrativeand not restrictive. The scope of the invention is, therefore, indicatedby the appended claims rather than by the foregoing description. Allchanges which come within the meaning and range of equivalency of theclaims are to be embraced within their scope.

What is claimed is:
 1. A system for providing personalized content,comprising: a tangible non-transitory computer-readable medium thatstores a plurality of instructions; and at least one processor thatexecutes the plurality of instructions to perform operations comprising:receiving, from a communication device, a request for content;determining the request for content is associated with an opt-out userwith no user profile; receiving, from the communication device, aselection of at least one third party profile; accessing, from adatabase, a set of short term user interests and a set of long term userinterests associated with the selected at least one third party profile;identifying a plurality of recommended content items for the opt-outuser based on the accessed set of short term user interests and theaccessed set of long term user interests; and providing the identifiedplurality of recommended content items for display on a user interfaceassociated with the communication device.
 2. The system of claim 1,wherein the at least one processor further executes the instructions toperform the following operations: receiving, from the communicationdevice, an election to receive content anonymously; and determining therequest for content is associated with the opt-out user based on thereceived election.
 3. The system of claim 1, wherein the receivedselection of at least one third party profile comprises: receiving, fromthe communication device; a third party search request; and providing,to the communication device, a third party search result identifying oneor more third party profiles in response to the third party searchrequest, wherein the selected at least one third party profile isselected from the identified one or more third party profiles.
 4. Thesystem of claim 1, wherein the at least one processor further executesthe instructions to perform the following operations: providing, to thecommunication device, one or ore third party profiles comprising a setof short term user interests and a set of long term user interests; andwherein the selected at least one third party profile is selected fromthe provided one or more third party profiles.
 5. The system of claim 4,wherein providing the one or more third party profiles includesproviding at least a subset of content indicated as previously viewed byone or more third parties in the set of short term user interests andthe set of long term user interests associated with the one or morethird party profiles.
 6. The system of claim 1, wherein the set of shortterm user interests associated with the selected at least one thirdparty profile is based on a history of user inputs during a networkingsession, and wherein the set of long term user interests associated withthe selected at least one third party profile is based on a history ofuser inputs during a plurality of networking sessions.
 7. The system ofclaim 1, wherein the at least one processor further executes theinstructions to perform the following operations: identifying an ownerfor the selected at least one third party profile; and enabling theopt-out user to communicate with the owner.
 8. The system of claim 1,wherein the at least one processor further executes the instructions toperform the following operations: enabling the user to interact with theplurality of recommended content items on the user interface.
 9. Amethod for providing personalized content, the method comprising thefollowing operations performed by at least one processor; receiving,from a communication device, a request for content; determining, by atleast one processor, the request for content is associated with anopt-out user with no user profile; receiving, from the communicationdevice, a selection of at least one third party profile; accessing, froma database, a set of short term user interests and a set of long termuser interests associated with the selected at least one third partyprofile; identifying, by the at least one processor, a plurality ofrecommended content items for the opt-out user based on the accessed setof short term user interests and the accessed set of long term userinterests; and providing the plurality of recommended content items fordisplay on a user interface associated with the communication device.10. The method of claim 9, further comprising: receiving, from thecommunication device, an election to receive content anonymously; anddetermining the request for content is associated with the opt-out userbased on the received election.
 11. The method of claim 9, wherein thereceived selection of at least one third party profile comprises:receiving, from the communication device; a third party search request;and providing, to the communication device, a third party search resultidentifying one or more third party profiles in response to the thirdparty search request, wherein the selected at least one third partyprofile is selected from the identified one or more third partyprofiles.
 12. The method of claim 9, further comprising: providing, tothe communication device, one or more third party profiles comprising aset of short term user interests and a set of long term user interests,wherein the selected at least one third party profile is selected fromthe provided one or more third party profiles.
 13. The method of claim12, wherein providing the one or more third party profiles includesproviding at least a subset of content indicated as previously viewed byone or more third parties in the set of short term user interests andthe set of long term user interests associated with the one or morethird party profiles.
 14. The method of claim 9, wherein the set ofshort term user interests associated with the selected at least onethird party profile is based on a history of user inputs during anetworking session, and wherein the set of long term user interestsassociated with the selected at least one third party profile is basedon a history of user inputs during a plurality of networking sessions.15. The method of claim 9, further comprising: identifying an owner forthe selected at least one third party profile; and enabling the opt-outuser to communicate with the owner.
 16. The method of claim 9, furthercomprising: enabling the user to interact with the plurality ofrecommended content items on the user interface.
 17. A non-transitorycomputer readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by oneor more processors, causes the one or more processors to performoperations for providing personalized content, comprising: receiving,from a communication device, a request for content; determining therequest for content is associated with an opt-out user having no userprofile; receiving, from the communication device, a selection of atleast one third party profile; accessing, from a database, a set ofshort term user interests and a set of long term user interestsassociated with the selected at least one third party profile;identifying a plurality of recommended content items for the opt-outuser based on the accessed set of short term user interests and theaccessed set of long term user interests; and providing the plurality ofrecommended content items for display on a user interface associatedwith the communication device.
 18. The medium of claim 17, wherein theinstructions further cause the one or more processors to performoperations comprising: providing, to the communication device, one ormore third party profiles comprising a set of short term user interestsand a set of long term user interests; and wherein the selected at leastone third party profile is selected from the provided one or more thirdparty profiles.
 19. The medium of claim 18, wherein providing the one ormore third party profiles includes providing at least a subset ofcontent indicated as previously viewed by one or more third parties inthe set of short term user interests and the set of long term userinterests associated with the one or more third party profiles.
 20. Themedium of claim 17, wherein the set of short term user interestsassociated with the selected at least one third party profile is basedon a history of user inputs during a networking session, and wherein theset of long term user interests associated with the selected at leastone third party profile is based on a history of user inputs during aplurality of networking sessions.